We Did
by MD14
Summary: One-shot. Bust, debrief, locker room, Sam. T for swearing. Warning: ANGST.


A/N: If you have a prompt or idea for a one-shot, feel free to send me a PM or leave it in the reviews. :)

* * *

Andy's been sitting in the back if the cruiser for twenty minutes before her arresting officer climbs in to the front, shooting her a dirty look in rearview mirror. The women has been insufferable from the moment she grabbed Andy's arm and thrust her up against a wall to slap the cuffs on.

_"Stop struggling, it'll hurt less."_

_"Stop making it hurt and it'll hurt less." She snaps back, figuring her cohorts will see it as her usual fiesty attitude. _

Her partner slides in to the drivers' seat adjacent to her, trying not to laugh. Great, just had to be Peckstein.

Nick practically blew the entire thing when Gail dragged her out of the building, while his GSW was being dressed by Caroline. That said, Andy practically blew the entire thing when he got shot. _'God that was terrifying.'_ It happened right when ETF was storming in, he was shot as he was turning around and he had his gun out, so the officer who did it had no idea who he was. Couldn't blame the poor guy, he just saw a threat and was trying to take care of it. Guy'll probably be raked over coals. Nick took it in the shoulder, and they weren't in a huge rush to get him to a hospital, so it must've avoided major arteries.

Still, Andy went to kneel down next to him, check his wounds and all like a good partner... or girlfriend, as the rest of their, associates, thought, before he convinced her to make a break for it.

_"Make it look real." He smiled through the pain. _

She'd been a bit inspired in that moment, wanted to find a window to climb out of and get Sam chasing her. See if she could get their first day recreated. And just when she caught his eye in the middle of the take down, and managed the smallest of smiles, Gail had her pressed up against that wall. So that little fantasy slipped away. Would've been cheesy anyways. Sam would never let it go. If they were even in a teasing kind of place. If they could ever get back to that place.

Besides she's wearing boots with a four inch heel, and a top that would definitely reveal too much while running. Unfair advantage. Plus these jeans barely allow her to bend there so tight. She feels like Olivia Newton John, those pants in Grease did not give. Andy heard she was sewn in...

"Let's go Dov!" Gail urges, while he's busy smiling at Andy in the rearview mirror.

Andy wants to grin back at him, happy that he's amused by Gail's shortness, but Andy definitely isn't. She gets it, the person she loved took off in the middle of the night while Gail, clearly, hadn't gone off on her European adventure. Andy gets that. She may not have loved Sam back then but when he left to work Brennan, it knocked her off her feet at first. Come on, _'I'm there when it matters,'_ but oddly enough, circumstances had him miss that one call. The most important call, by mere minutes.

But really, Andy's cheek, and boobs, are killing her for her collision with that wall. _'Thanks Peck, you're a peach.'_ She'll have to remember to return the favor sometime.

"We're getting, we're going."

* * *

They've gotten her into a holding cell alone, thankfully. She didn't realize how tired she was until right this second, and she doesn't think she could keep up the act if even her life depended on it. Dov brought her coffee and a sandwich an hour ago, and told her they were waiting on a detective to help Luke debrief, and they were on their way back from the warehouse.

"What about Nick? How is he?" She says right before Dov was about to turn away.

Dov sighs and gave her a small smile.

"He lost a lot of blood. But, he should make a full recovery." He replies, but Andy knows he's holding something back.

"And Gail?"

"Prepare for Hurricane Peck." He laughs, before getting out of her hair.

Andy laughs and takes a sip of the steaming hot coffee, grateful for it. An hour ago her eyes were drooping.

When she finally spots Luke walking into booking, a half hour later, she stands up and turns her back to the door, prepared for him to cuff her. He comes in, and does his best not to smile and shoves her out roughly, making it look real.

It's when they're right outside of interview one, she's wishing she'd asked for a pair of sweats rather than coffee. _'Seriously, these pants!'_ It's when they're inside, interview one, she was only wishing that maybe Traci had decided to act as Luke's objective partner in the debrief.

The video cameras already flashing red, Sam clearly avoiding anything personal at the moment.

"Officer McNally, please take a seat." He says gesturing to the chair opposite him.

Andy's eyebrows furrow but she listens. She knows it's best to keep things professional right now. He knows that too. But not even a hey, or a 'I'm glad your home McNally'. Not even a 'I hate for you leaving.' Any kind of statement with some heat behind it. Because heat meant feelings, good or bad. But this removed Sam, the 'on the job' Sam, is worse.

And so, she's debriefed.

* * *

The minute she's done answering Luke's last question, Sam is out the door, leaving Luke to actually say goodbye and that she could come back to work in two weeks.

Walking back out into the hallway she notices him and Traci at the coffee kiosk, and they're hunched together. She can't see Sam's face, but looking at Traci she knows they're having a hushed argument. Before Traci spots her, she turns toward the locker room, just wanting so badly to not be wearing this outfit anymore. She's burning the pants when she gets home, she decides.

The second her hand touches her lock, the locker room doors bust open, and before she can even utter a hello, Traci is hugging her.

"Hey!" Andy says, happily enveloping her friend. "I was going to change before I said hi."

Traci stays quiet, just clinging onto her friend.

"I'm sorry." Andy whispers when Traci doesn't say a word.

Traci pulls away from her and Andy looks at the twisted confusion all over her face

"For leaving, I'm sorry."

"Oh, Andy, dude, I was offered the spot too. I was totally prepared to leave that night, but Luke said I couldn't say goodbye to Leo." Traci explains, grabbing Andy's hands in her own. "I'm not mad. I was proud of you."

Andy nods, but doesn't really accept it.

"I'm serious, Andy. We all understood."

She snorts and looks down at the ground, and finally she has time to let the last six months hit her, sink in. She doesn't have to worry about the next step. And one single tear makes its way down her cheek.

"Yeah? Sam understood? Because from what just happened-"

"He's just... he's doing his best right now Andy." Traci says sympathetic to both sides. She knew what he'd told her. He got wasted one night at the Penny, bout a week after Andy left, and Traci had to drive him home. Oliver didn't come out much anymore since Zoe took him back, Noelle and Frank had the baby. Liam told her he'd been there each night since Andy failed to show up.

Traci dragged him home, splashed some water on his face, told him to get his act together. Guilted him into telling her what their talk in the hallway was about. Guilted him into shaping up, telling him that Jerry wouldn't want this for the people who were still lucky enough to be here. Probably the lowest thing she's done, but it's not like it's a lie. Jerry wouldn't want that.

"When did he take the exam?" She asks, wanting to keep herself together at least until she gets everything in order at home.

"Two months ago. How crazy is it that I have a bit of upper hand here?" Traci laughs, seeing that her friend isn't ready for this talk yet.

* * *

At some point, Traci's gotta go back to work so Andy finally gets to peel off that deathly outfit and shower.

Under the spray of the hot water, the tension in her shoulders and neck are immediately released, and she lets out a shaky sigh. She's finally alone for the first time in six months. No one to hold it together for, no one to keep her tears away and at bay. So she lets it all go.

She lets go of everyone that she and Nick watched executed. She lets go of all the times she thought about putting her life on the line to save just one of them, but didn't. She lets go of the life she left here when she took the job, because it is not the same life that she's coming home to.

The water is turning her skin red where it hits by the time she turns off the stream, and steps out to wrap herself in a clean white towel. She doesn't dress right away, and takes a step out to the mirrors. She's close to the door, but it's mid shift, so she's not concerned about a slew of women storming in.

She takes a look at how everything between her collar bone and shoulders are a bit concave. Like someone hollowed her out. Her pigmentation is off... none of her makeup is going to be right. There are bruises on her right arm, and left wrist. Joey liked to pull you to the back office when you did something wrong. Apparently Andy made more mistakes than anyone else.

She's running her hand around her wrist when she hears the low, slow breaths coming from the bench in front of her locker. She just knows it's him.

"What're you doing in here?"

He shrugs, tries to offer a lazy smile, but his eyes betray him, skim over her exposed arms, neck, shoulders. His jaw is set, she notices, and he takes turns clenching each fist. Trying his best to remain calm, controlled.

"I didn't get a chance to say welcome back." He says lamely. If Traci hadn't thrown him in there the minute she stepped out, he'd still be avoiding her. It was too much to deal with in the middle of work. But he waited for twenty minutes for her to get out of the shower, he waited twenty minutes for her tears to stop. It wasn't just crying, they were unrestrained sobs. Took everything he had to stay where he was. There was a reason she wanted the privacy of a shower to let it all go. He wasn't going to take that away from her.

So he sat and listened. He wondered if she'd ever cried like that before. Cried like that when her mom left. When her dad hit bottom. When Luke cheated. When he walked away...

Probably not. She was mad enough at Luke that she could keep on the sane side of hysteria. Not with him either. She probably bared them silently, probably didn't cry on Traci's shoulder, not with everything that had happened. She probably ate her weight in ice cream (without gaining a pound, because she has the metabolism of a twelve year old) and watched her box set of Meg Ryan romantic comedies.

"Well, thanks. But I should get home. I'm pretty exhausted." She says, examining him examining her. He nods, but stays where he stands. "I need to change." She adds, awkwardly gesturing towards her locker. Registering her not so subtle hint, he starts to take a few steps back, examining the floor.

"I'll drive you home. I'm done in a half hour, if you don't mind waiting." He says, not bothering stopping to hear her answer.

And she doesn't mind. So she waits.

* * *

After waiting for him outside of his office, things are, off. Their comfortable silence that was often between them has vaporized and they both silently realize that this is not going away any time soon. This is what'll become of them if they don't deal with this.

When they're outside of the truck, it looks like he's going to try and say something, and for a half of a second she waits to see if he does. He doesn't.

"C'mon Sam." She says in a voice that sound like it tried to be a whine, but just couldn't muster the strength. She pulls open her door and slides in, while he shakes his head, clearing it, and does the same.

"Yeah, sorry. You must be in a hurry to leave."

It shouldn't bother her. It's a simple statement. She _knows_ he meant that she just wants to get home, but it becomes this neon sign in her head that this is something bigger, something his subconscious wanted to say.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Andy questions, immediately taking defense, and causing Sam to turn to her quickly. His face is pulled back like she just grew an extra head. "You know, you're not going to make me feel guilty about doing this. It was a great opportunity."

He's still pulling the same face, but now he knows where this all came from.

"Andy you know what I meant-"

"I don't need this, I'm walking home." She says, undoing her seatbelt, and opening the door.

In a moment of weakness, weakness, after six months of promising that he'd be strong, he says the worst possible thing he could think of.

"Well leavings what you're good at." He cringes once the last of it is out of his mouth. And he's a _man_ okay? Isn't he supposed to say dumb shit?

"Do you really want to do this? Here, now?" She questions, not even giving him any indication that she's hurt by what he said. She's not running on much at this point. It's 2 AM, she's so close to getting home to her own bed, living her own life. Of course she doesn't want to, and he doesn't want to make her, but he can't let that be what he's done her first night back. He just can't.

"No, but maybe we should." He returns with equal heat.

"Fine. Yeah, I left Sam. Are you saying that I should've chosen us over that opportunity. Would you have asked me to do that?"

"No." He says, surprised she's gone right for the jugular.

"If you had found out that I turned it down for you, what would you have said?" She questions, once again with the no nonsense look on her face.

"I would've told you to go." He says, understanding that she understood him better than he knew. It's true, he would've hated it if she'd picked him, if he'd asked her to pick. He wasn't going to do that. She was still young and new, and she still had to find her way in this job. "But you could've told me you were leaving. You owed me that!"

"I owed you that? Are you kidding me? I still wasn't sure if I wanted this. I wasn't sure that I could get past everything we did to each other. I wasn't sure that I could go back into a life with someone who's middle name I don't even know." She shouts back.

And they haven't had a lot of fights over many things of consequence, and they really didn't shout when it was important. There were heated words, and looks that conveyed the anger, but her shouting is really biting into him, and he can't help but shout back.

"Don't you dare say that I was the only one who was closed off Andy!"

She leans back a little, biting hard on the inside of her cheeks, lips pursed, eyes warning him not to say anything more. She's trying to calm things right back down again, but it's like she also wants to get this all out of the way now. Because if it all comes out right now, and they can stay standing in front of each other, they have a chance.

"You know what Sam? Fine, I didn't share a lot of myself with you voluntarily, but guess what? I have to be here, in this place where everyone knows every goddamn reason I'm broken." She says, eyes wide, voice desperate. Sam looks at her, really stares into her, and sees for the first time the real consequences of her following in her father's footsteps. It was about more than her restoring the family name that she had to overcome.

"You want me to share? It's so un-fucking fair that I don't get to choose what people know about me. They all know about my dad, my mom, my failed engagement. I don't get to share, it's public knowledge. That's why it's so hard for me to trust people. To let them know anymore than that."

"Andy-"

"I am so jealous of you. You get to be this big mystery, that no one knows. You get complete control. I would kill for that. But my fate was sealed when I walked into 15, and I can't help but wonder where I'd be if I hadn't."

Sam sighs, and looks at her face that has hardened, and reverted. Like the tears never fell, like her voice never wavered or broke. He's never really thought of her life this way. He never really understood why she was so desperate to know about his life, his past.

"I know I could've given you more. But I didn't. You could've given me more but you didn't. And I'm sorry that I didn't give you the space you needed."

She's staring at the console between them, and she takes a deep breath, allowing her lungs to fill.

"I guess when two people really love each other, they want to give it their all. But we didn't."

And now he can see that she's giving herself a way out of this. That she's talked in circles enough to convince herself they're better off, and he's going to have to fight to keep her. If he weren't so worried that he was losing all over again he'd think she was a genius, and this some kind of test. But he is. He's so afraid that she's been more marked and hurt by them than this job and the physical toll it took on her.

"We did."

"Sam-"

"No, listen to me, we did. I still do." He says, and the look in her eyes changes. "I hate to say this but I get when people say 'You don't know what you've got till it's gone.' And I wish I'd never let you go."

He can see that she's still trying to convince herself she's right, even though her face has let go of what anger she had left.

"I wish I didn't make that time harder on myself than I did. Hindsight is 20/20 right? I knew I was wrong the minute I got into my truck. You knew better than me. You told me I wasn't myself. I _knew_ that. Somehow I still thought that I was protecting us from more pain."

"Yeah, because it hurts so much less to be walked away from, than to be taken away." She says sarcastically.

She's about to look away from him, but he needs her to hear him. He grabs her hand, carefully avoiding her wrist, and pulls at it to get her attention.

"I wish I'd realized that. And I'm sorry I had to find that out while you were holding a grenade. And I'm sorry that haven't told you as much as you deserve, that I love you." He's whispering now, at some point he got his hands on her pale face, and is stroking away some of her silent tears with his thumb. "And that's not changing. But if you tell me right now, that you don't love me, that you can never love me again, then I'll let you go. I'll hate every minute of it, but I will."

And he broke her. This little sob rips from her throat, and he knows that it's all caught up with her all over again. That she's too fragile for this right now. That any decision she makes-

But then she throws her arms around his neck. And as uncomfortable as it is to be doing this sideways in the truck, he holds her tight too. He broke her, but he has every intention of putting her back together.


End file.
